This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

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Saturday, July 22, 2017

Public Schools In Cooperation With Community Leaders And Parents Are The Answer, NOT Charter Schools by Shannon Ergun

I have
opposed charter schools for many years now. It started with it just feeling
wrong to create a separate system touting to incubate innovation to better meet
the needs of students when that was possible in the public school system.
Tacoma has done a great job of finding ways to innovate. They still need to
develop better systems to make the innovations broadly and easily accessible to
all our students. However, I feel like we have people in leadership (through
the union, the board, and administration) working to address this problem.

As I have read more and more on charter schools and their impact on local
communities and on students, I have come to realize that my initial feeling is
proving true over and over again. While initially the NAACP supported the idea
of charter schools as incubators of innovation, they have since come out
strongly against charter schools. You can read their resolution for a
moratorium on charter schools and the reasons for it here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../regarding-the-naacp...

The National Education Association came out against charter schools years ago
as educators watched the impact they had on public schools. At the national
representative assembly this month, the 9,000 delegates approved a policy
statement regarding charter schools outlining under what circumstances they
should be supported and when they should not be. Because states define charter
schools in different ways, it was important to create a national policy that
outlined what constitutes a charter school that when funded through taxpayer
funds is then overseen by elected public leaders. To read more on this
statement, check here:http://www.nea.org/home/CharterSchoolPolicyStatement.html

Finally, UCLA has done extensive research on the charter school movement over
the last 14 years and has found that they increase segregation and do not
provide improved educational outcomes for students. You can find a summary of
their report here: https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/.../choice...

What I see currently happening across the nation is that schools for
generations have been starved of funding while being asked to do more and more.
Educators and public schools are then blamed for failing based on a system of
tests originally designed to prove that black and brown people are intellectually
inferior (side note, do some research on the history of standardized testing
and we can talk further on this issue). I will not even begin to argue about
the fact that schools need to do better to serve our racially and culturally
diverse students. We truly have a system that favors upper/middle income white
students. We have millions of pages of research and data to prove it. Yet, we
continue to argue for billions of dollars in standardized tests, scripted
curricula, and online programs that have been shown again and again not to meet
the needs of the vast majority of our children. What we truly need is to work
on the social issues (homelessness, hunger, mental illness, addiction,
joblessness, etc.) through our national, state, and local governments.

Then we need to fund our schools so that all our children have what the wealthy
buy for their kids through private schools - smaller classes, plenty of arts
and extracurricular opportunities, hands-on and experiential learning through
field trips and outreach programs, and opportunities for students to explore
their interests in various subject areas so that they can make an informed
decision about post-secondary pathways. Any student who wants to attend college
should. All students should be guided to make post-secondary choices based on
their passions and talents and interests and goals NOT on their family income,
race, gender, or standardized tests determined aptitude. All students should be
encouraged to take advanced courses especially in their particular area(s) of
interest.

While we focus on guiding students to the post-secondary success that meets
their interests and needs, we need to stop focusing so heavily on numerical
data and begin a shift to exploring in what ways our schools are meeting the
needs of diverse cultures and races to expand those practices more broadly
across schools. We must also examine how we are obstructing student success and
shift those practices to culturally responsive ones. Our educators need
professional development through their university education programs and
continuing through their career on culturally responsive methodology. We need
support in implementing restorative justice practices. Districts in cooperation
with teachers' unions must develop cadres for educators of color to serve as
leaders in creating diversity teams and early career educator mentorship
opportunities. We need to repair our public schools from within.

I truly feel that those who promote local charter schools, not the corporate
for-profit ones but those developed by local leaders and parents frustrated by
the system that ignores their needs, are trying to find a solution to a huge
problem. My hope is that we can develop ways for their concerns, feedback, and
ideas to be used in the public schools to improve outcomes for more than just
the few who could be served in a separate system. When asked once by a
colleague if I didn't just want to create a school where "these kids"
could do well, I responded, "Yes, but rather than create a new and separate
school, I want to work to repair and improve the ones we have so that all
students benefit not just a select few."

I hope that after looking more deeply at this issue and reading some of the
links above that you too will shift to wanting to find ways to incorporate the
amazing ideas that our community members have into our current schools rather
than continue to suggest that we need to have a separate system. We know from
decades of evidence that separate is never equal.